Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Note on Alma 5:48

Alma 5:48 in the current text of the Book of Mormon reads:

 

And I say unto you, that I know of myself that whatsoever I shall say unto you, concerning that which is to come, is true; and I say unto you, that I know that Jesus Christ shall come, yea, the Son, the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace, and mercy, and truth. And behold, it is he that cometh to take away the sins of the world, yea, the sins of every man who steadfastly believeth on his name.

 

The printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon do not read “the Son, the Only Begotten of the Father,” but “the son of the only begotten of the Father.”

 

Skousen notes that:

 

The extra of after Son appears to be an early error in the transmission of the text (either when the scribe in [the Original Manuscript] took down Joseph Smith's dictation or when the scribe 2 of [the Printer's Manuscript] copied the text from [the Original Manuscript]. The same error appears later on in the book of Alma:

 

Alma 13:9

thus they become high priests forever

after the order of the son [of>js Null 1 [of A] BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

the Only Begotten of the Father

 

In both cases, scribe 2 of [the Printer's Manuscript] was the one who copied the text from [the Original Manuscript] into [the Printer's Manuscript]. Joseph Smith, in his editing for the 1837 edition, deleted the extra of in both these passages. Literally, the earliest text for these two passages says that there is a son of the Son of the Father, which contradicts all other uses in the Book of Mormon of the phrases "Only Begotten Son" and "Only Begotten of the Father". Otherwise, these phrases always refer to the Son of God, not to a son of the Son of God . . . (Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part 3: Mosiah 17-Alma 20, pp. 1698-99)

 

Skousen then references 2 Nephi 25:12; Jacob 4:5; 4:11; Alma 9:26; 12:33; 12:34; 13:5 where Jesus is "the Only Begotten Son" or "Only Begotten of the Father."

 

Gardner agrees with Skousen that this is probably an error:

 

I suspect that the original was “the son, the only begotten of the Father” just as it has been edited since the 1837 edition. (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford, 2007], 4:109)

 

Either way, Alma 5:48 is a great text showing that the Book of Mormon does not Modalism. On the charge that early Latter-day Saint theology was that of Modalism, see, for e.g.:


Early Mormon Modalism? A Dialogue with Stephen Murphy





See also my two-part debate/dialogue with my friend Adam Stokes on whether the Book of Mormon and other early Restorationist texts (e.g., Lectures on Faith; 1832 First Vision Account) taught Modalism.